Quotes from Thomas Szasz

There is no evidence that suicide prevention prevents suicide. Psychiatrists and psychiatric hospitals are regularly sued and found liable for patient suicides. Psychiatrists kill themselves at three times the rate of the general public.

In the history of the twentieth century, the principal dramatis personae were National and International Socialisms, better known as Nazism and Communism. Their citizens evaded the duty of self-responsibility by claiming to be following orders. Following orders -attributed to or issued by God, the State, Science, Medicine-is always the easy way out. Refusing to do so requires self-reliance and resisting temptations and threats.

What, then, are psychotherapists and what do they sell to or impose on their clients? Insofar as they use force, psychotherapists are judges and jailers, inquisitors and torturers; insofar as they eschew it, they are secular priests and pseudomedical rhetoricians. Their services consist of coercions and constraints imposed on individuals on behalf of other persons or social groups, or they consist of contracts and conversations entered into by individuals on their own behalf.

Psikiyatrda [aliénist] olduÄŸu gibi rahipte de, her zaman sorgu yarg?c?ndan bir ÅŸeyler vard?r. –Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

The person who kills himself sees suicide as a solution. If the observer views it as a problem, he precludes understanding the suicide just as surely as he would preclude understanding a Japanese speaker if he assumed that he is hearing garbled English.

Not until human nature itself progresses morally will the majority of people prefer peaceful and boring market relations to the violent and exciting relations between coercer and coerced, predator and victim.

Yetersizce bast?r?lm?? cinsellik baz? aileleri sars?yor; iyice bast?r?lm?? cinsellik ise bütün dünyay?.

Birçok insan hastad?r. Fakat yaln?zca psikanalistler bunu gurur duyulacak bir ÅŸey olarak görür.

Ä°nsan "bilimleri" fizik bilimlerinden sadece farkl? deÄŸil, birçok bak?mdan onlar?n z?dd?d?r. DoÄŸa ne yalan ne doÄŸru söyler, oysa insanlar al??kanl?klar? üzere ikisini de yapar.

Psikiyatri –burada bu terimi psikanalizi, psikolojiyi ve bütün ak?l saÄŸl??? mesleklerini içine alacak ÅŸekilde kullan?yorum– modern toplumlar?n en önemli kurumlar?ndan biridir ve "ak?l hastal???n?n diÄŸer hastal?klar gibi bir hastal?k olduÄŸu" ÅŸeklindeki postulat-önermeye s?k?ca baÄŸl?d?r. Bu önerme bir yaland?r.

T?bbîleÅŸtirme sekülerleÅŸtirmenin bir yan?d?r, terapötik devlet (t?p ile devletin ittifak?) teolojik devletin (kilise ile devletin ittifak?) yerini al?r. Geleneksel olarak, günah diye s?n?fland?r?lan belli davran??lar hastal?k ÅŸeklinde yeniden tan?mlan?r, böylece bunlar?n zor yoluyla "tedavi"leri gerekçe bulur.

OlaÄŸanüstü iddialar olaÄŸanüstü kan?tlar? gerektirir," uyar?s?nda bulunmuÅŸ olan Marquis de Laplace'? (s?k s?k "Frans?z Newton" diye adland?r?lan matematikçi ve astronom Pierre-Simon Laplace [1794-1827])

In short, hysteria is a type of language in which communication is effected by means of pictures (or iconic signs), instead of by means of words (or conventional signs). Hysterical language thus resembles other picture languages, such as charades. Those who want to deal with so-called hysterical patients must therefore learn not how to diagnose or treat them, but how to understand their special idiom and how to translate it into ordinary language.

Mutsuzluk, çaresizlik, hayal k?r?kl??? ve intihar insanl?k halinin ayr?lmaz parças?d?r. Bunlar?n sebebi ne iblisleri olmak ne de ak?l hastas? olmakt?r. Herkesin bildiÄŸi bu gerçeÄŸi iddia etmek ÅŸöyle dursun, ona inanma cesaretine bile herkes sahip deÄŸildir.

Happiness is ... usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

Psychiatrists classify a person as neurotic if he suffers from his problems in living, and a psychotic if he makes others suffer.

The self is not something that one finds. It is something one creates.

The proverb warns that "You should not bite that hand that feeds you." But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.

In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.

Men often treat others worse than they treat themselves, but they rarely treat anyone better. It is the height of folly to expect consideration and decency from a person who mistreats himself.

Men are rewarded or punished not for what they do but for how their acts are defined. That is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.

The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy — and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live — only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs — is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species bent on a quest for salvation, security, or sanity

Man cannot long survive without air, water, and sleep. Next in importance comes food. And close on its heels, solitude.

There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.